


Falling in Love with a Coffeeshop

by lightsaberlesbian



Series: Humans Fanwork Challenge 2017 [8]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 15:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14980082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightsaberlesbian/pseuds/lightsaberlesbian
Summary: Odi knew the coffee shop was his call; he loved working with people, loved watching the stories of their lives develop in front of him, if only for short moments at a time.





	Falling in Love with a Coffeeshop

**Author's Note:**

> AU Week  
> Day 4: Coffee Shop/Bookshop AU  
> Another timeless classic. You know the drill. Someone works in that sweet little establishment around the corner, and someone else comes in looking for a coffee (or a novel or a necklace or a tin of dogfood) and finds much, much more… Cheese it up for this one. You know you want to.

George Millican and his wife Mary lived next door and were close friends to Odi’s family so when Odi was in need of a summer job they had been kind enough to offer him the very honorable position as a cleaner and dishwasher in their little coffee shop. By the end of that summer, Odi was prepared to find himself looking for work again and was very much surprised when Mr. Millican had approached him and said that they wanted to promote him to a barista, an offer he was more than happy to accept. He worked nights and weekends there for several years beside his studies and when he turned twenty two the Millicans offered him the business, an offer he gladly accepted to everyone’s surprise. His parents thought he was wasting his potential by staying in the same town he grew up in working at the same place since he was a teenager, but Odi loved it. He loved working with people, getting to know them and their routines and bringing them together.

 

For example, with the police station being just around the corner, the whole force was considered regulars. The nicer ones, like D.I Voss, always greeted Odi with a “good morning” and usually ordered plain black coffee to go in the mornings. The less polite ones, like D.S Drummond who liked to vape and in line and mutter about how slow it was going, ordered Americanos and cream cheese bagels. The first always rolled their eyes, sighed and apologized for the rudeness of the latter.

 

Choice of drink varied between ages too and changed as customers got older. A red-haired mother with heavy bags underneath her eyes, briefcase in one hand and her very energetic little daughter, whose curls were always bouncing up and down in excitement, in the other and her cellphone supported by her shoulder to her ear. They always came in on Tuesdays; the mother ordered a double espresso for herself and a frappuccino for the child, a new flavor every time and always something colorful like the tights and tutus she wore. Over the years he took great pleasure in following her orders change from “unicorn” (cotton candy mixed with sour blue raspberry) to mocha flavor, to actual mochas (still with whipped cream on top) to vanilla lattes to regular lattes (no sugar) until she stopped coming around, most likely having moved somewhere else. Sometimes Odi wondered if she too was drinking double espressos somewhere now.

 

There once was a winter when Odi noticed a young blond woman spending almost just as much time in the coffee shop as he did; always reading a book or a magazine, or watching movies or writing on her on her laptop, she often stayed from opening hours to when they were closing. Sometimes she’d just be looking out the window, watching the snow fall or the sun set or rise. Odi never got to know anything about her other than that her name was Niska but he knew people well enough that he knew that she was running from something, that she was there to avoid something. Or someone.

But he was happy that he had been there the time a pretty brunette girl ordered two hot chocolates and brought one over to her. Time went by and he witnessed their relationship grow from only being two strangers silently sharing hot beverages one cold winter evening, to quite regularly chatting over chai in the early spring, to holding hands across the table, to what Odi believed to be their first kiss under a streetlight as they left one summer evening.

 

The young women weren’t the only people that had found each other in Odi’s coffee shop, his best friend and co-worker Max had also fallen in love there. Odi had been cleaning tables and Max had been standing behind the counter the day she walked in, arms linked with her friends in flowy summer dresses in the middle of July to order iced tea to relieve themselves from the heat outside.

“Peach flavor,” she had said.

“Oh, that would match the color of your hair,” Max had remarked before he realized that all iced teas are orangey brown and not peachy pink, like her hair. The girls around her had giggled at how flustered he got, which made him all the more embarrassed (he had always been awkward around girls, ever since middle school) but she had ignored them and smiled a little instead and bit her lip, as she had stretched out her hand to introduce herself. Her name was Florentine, but preferred to be called Flash. She came back to the shop frequently after that, and not always with her friends and quite often when Max was on break. And with his friend being as shy as he was, Odi had been the one to secretly write down Max’s number on her cup one time she ordered an iced tea to go and the rest was history.

 

They were located near the local campus and Odi’s other best friend Mattie always came before and after her classes at university. The free unlimited wifi and calm atmosphere was perfect to study in. She always ordered cappuccinos, which allowed him to doodle funny little figures and scribble messages to her in the foam to cheer her up whenever she was stressed over how much her school required of her. 

 

“Never go to uni, Odi,” she’d whine.

 

He reassured her that he never would, or at least not for a very long time. He knew the coffee shop was his call; he loved working with people, loved watching the stories of their lives develop in front of him, if only for short moments at a time.

 


End file.
